Craic On

According to the Inishowen Independent today, An Post has received over 500 letters asking them to keep the post office open in Greencastle. That’s almost one for every head of population.

They have taken other action to back this up. The Post Office in Greencastle now has four times as much business as it had prior to the announcement that they might be closing. Having an AIB outlet there has helped that but it has mainly been because local people have supported the Post Office.

Garda Station

I was thinking about this when I read that there had been only 37 crimes over the first six months of the year in the catchment area of the Moville Garda station. This was the 3rd lowest in the peninsula.

While this is great news for Moville it may not be good news if we want the Moville garda station to stay open and keep up a full complement of garda. There are just not enough crimes to keep them all going.

I think that there used to be four but one retired and they are not allowed to replace them now. There must be just three now (I’m not sure if this is correct). If it is correct that’s only around 12 crimes for each of them over a 6-month period. The powers that be may notice that and think that this is not enough.

Learning

However, Moville people could learn from the actions of those in Greencastle in their efforts to keep the post office open.

Moville garda station needs more ‘transactions’ to justify them staying open. Moville has a population of 1,465 at the last census. If everyone was to commit one crime by the end of the year that would help a great deal to keep the station open. You don’t need to be caught to get in the figures as these are recorded crimes.

That would take the crime figures up from 37 in the first half of the year to 1,502 in the second half of the year. Parents of those too young to commit crimes would have to commit an extra one for each child.

Quality Crimes

I think that the quality of the crimes could be better too than just burglary, theft, assault and public order offences. Maybe a couple of kidnappings would take the quality of crime higher. I’ve got one or two ideas on who I might kidnap.

Perhaps Martin Farren could be sent to meet people in Derry or Buncrana to see how we can ge the crime rate up.

There may be some of you out there a bit queasy about doing this but it is for a very worthwhile cause.

Go on then!

Rally round!

Take one for the town!

And you might not get caught anyway!

For more info click Garda Station Spoof Article Goes Viral